Mistress of Justice (4 page)

He held up a hand to stop her. “Your experience doesn’t really matter. Not for what I have in mind. Your discretion’s what’s important.”

“I’ve worked on a lot of sensitive deals. I appreciate client confidentiality.”

“Good. But this situation requires more than confidentiality. If we were the government I guess we’d call it top secret.”

When Taylor was a little girl her favorite books were
about exploration and adventure. The two at the top of her list were the Alice stories—
Wonderland
and
Through the Looking-Glass
. She liked them because the adventures didn’t take the heroine to foreign lands or back through history; they were metaphoric journeys through the bizarre side of life around us.

Taylor was now intrigued.
Lion’s den. Top secret
.

She said, “Go ahead.”

“Coffee?”

“Sure. Just milk, no sugar.”

Reece stood up stiffly, as if he’d been sitting in one position for hours. His office was a mess. A hundred files—bulging manila folders and Redwelds stuffed with documents—filled the floor, the credenza, his desk. Stacks of legal magazines, waiting to be read, filled the spaces between the files. She smelled food and saw the remains of a take-out Chinese dinner sitting in a greasy bag beside the door.

He stepped into the canteen across the hall and she glanced out, watched him pour two cups.

Taylor studied him: the expensive but wrinkled slacks and shirt (there was a pile of new Brooks Brothers’ shirts on the credenza behind him; maybe he wore one of these to court if he didn’t have time to pick up his laundry). The tousled dark hair. The lean physique. She knew that the trial lawyer, with dark straight hair a touch long to go unnoticed by the more conservative partners, was in his mid-thirties. He specialized in litigation and had a reputation of his own. The firm’s clients loved him because he won cases; the firm loved him because he ran up huge tabs doing so. (Taylor had heard that he’d once billed twenty-six hours in a single day; working on a flight to L.A., he’d taken advantage of the time zones.)

Young associates idolized Reece though they burned out working for him. Partners were uncomfortable supervising him; the briefs and motion papers he wrote under their names were often way beyond the older lawyers’ skills at legal drafting.

Reece also was the driving force behind the firm’s pro
bono program, volunteering much of his time to represent indigent clients in criminal cases.

On the personal side, Reece was
the
trophy of the firm, according to many women paralegals. He was single and probably straight (the proof wasn’t conclusive—a divorce—but the ladies were willing to accept that circumstantial evidence as entirely credible). He’d had affairs with at least two women at the firm, or so the rumor went. On the other hand, they lamented, he was your standard Type A workaholic and thus a land mine in the relationship department. Which, nonetheless, didn’t stop most of them from dreaming, if not flirting.

Reece returned to his office and closed the door with his foot, handed her the coffee. He sat down.

“Okay, here it is—our client’s been robbed,” he said.

She asked, “As in what they do to you on the subway or what they do at the IRS?”

“Burglary.”

“Really?” Taylor again swallowed the yawn that had been trying to escape and rubbed her own stinging eyes.

“What do you know about banking law?” he asked.

“The fee for bounced checks is fifteen dollars.”

“That’s all?”

“I’m afraid so. But I’m a fast learner.”

Reece said seriously, “I hope so. Here’s your first lesson. One of the firm’s clients is New Amsterdam Bank & Trust. You ever work for them?”

“No.” She knew about the place, though; it was the firm’s largest banking client and had been with Hubbard, White for nearly a hundred years. Taylor took a steno pad out of her purse and uncapped a pen.

“Don’t write.”

“I like to get the facts straight,” she said.

“No, don’t write,” he said bluntly.

“Well, okay.” The pad vanished.

Reece continued. “Last year the bank loaned two hundred fifty million dollars to a company in Midtown. Hanover & Stiver, Inc.”

“What do they do?”

“They make things. I don’t know. Widgets, baubles, bangles, bright, shiny beads.” Reece shrugged then continued, “Now the first installments of the loan were due six months ago and the company missed the payments. They go back and forth, the bank and Hanover, but it’s pretty clear that the company’s never going to pay the money back. So, under the loan agreement, the whole amount comes due—a quarter-billion dollars.”

“What’d they do with the money?”

“Good question. My feeling is it’s still sitting somewhere—hell, they didn’t have
time
to spend that much. But anyway, what happens at New Amsterdam—our revered client—is this: The economy melts down and the bank’s reserves are shrinking. Now, the government says to all banks, Thou shalt have X amount of dollars on hand at all times. But New Amsterdam doesn’t
have
X amount anymore. They need more in their reserves or the feds’re going to step in. And the only way to get a big infusion of cash is to get back Hanover’s loan. If they don’t, the bank could go under. And that results in a couple of problems: First, Amsterdam is Donald Burdick’s plum client. If the bank goes under he will not be a happy person, nor will the firm, because they pay us close to six million a year in fees. The other problem is that New Amsterdam happens to be a bank with a soul. They have the largest minority-business lending program in the country. Now, I’m not a flaming liberal, but you may have heard that one of my pet projects here—”

“The criminal pro bono program.”

“Right. And I’ve seen firsthand that the one thing that helps improve shitty neighborhoods is to keep businesses in them. So I have a philosophical stake in the outcome of this … situation.”

“And what exactly
is
the situation, Mitchell?”

“Earlier in the fall we filed suit against Hanover for the two hundred fifty million plus interest. Now if we can get a judgment fast we can levy against the assets of the company
before the other creditors know what hit them. But if there’s a delay in enforcing that judgment the company’ll go into bankruptcy, the assets’ll disappear and New Amsterdam might just go into receivership.”

Taylor tapped the pen on her knee. She didn’t mean to be projecting the impatience she felt though she knew maybe she was. “And the burglary part?”

He replied, “I’m getting to that. To loan the money the bank made Hanover sign a promissory note—you know, a negotiable instrument that says Hanover promises to pay the money back. It’s like your savings bond.”

Not like one of
mine
, Taylor reflected, considering what
theirs
was worth.

“Now the trial was set for yesterday. I had the case all prepared. There was no way we’d lose.” Reece sighed. “Except … When you’re going to sue to recover money on a note you have to produce the note in court. On Saturday the bank couriered the note to me. I put it in the safe there.” He nodded at a big filing cabinet bolted to the floor. There were two heavy key locks on the front.

Shocked, Taylor said,
“That’s
what was stolen? The note?”

Reece said in a low voice, “Somebody took it right out of my fucking safe. Just walked right in and walked out with it.”

“You need the original? Can’t you use a copy?”

“We could still win the case but not having the note’ll delay the trial for months. I managed to finagle a postponement till next week but the judge won’t grant any more extensions.”

She nodded at the file cabinet. “But when … how was it stolen?”

“I was here until about three on Sunday morning. I went home to get some sleep and was back here by nine-thirty that morning. I almost thought of camping out.” He gestured toward a sleeping bag in the corner. “I should have.”

“What’d the police say?”

He laughed. “No, no. No police. Burdick’d find out that the note’s missing, the client too. The newspapers …” He held her eyes. “So I guess you know why I asked you here.”

“You want me to find out who took it?”

“Actually, I’d like you to find the note itself. I don’t really care who did it.”

She laughed. The whole idea was ridiculous. “But why me?”

“I can’t do it by myself.” Reece leaned back in his chair; the singing metal rang again. He looked at ease, as if she had already accepted his offer—a bit of haughtiness that irritated her some. “Whoever took it’ll know I can’t go to the cops and he’ll be anticipating me. I need somebody else to help me. I need you.”

“I just—”

“I know about your ski trip. I’m sorry. You’d have to postpone it.”

Well, so much for the negotiations, Ms. Strickland.…

“Mitchell, I don’t know. I’m flattered you called me but I don’t have a clue how to go about it.”

“Well, let me just say one thing. We work with a lot of, you know, private eyes—”

“Sam Spade, sure.”

“Actually, no,
not
Sam Spade at all. This’s what I’m saying: The best detectives’re women. They listen better than men. They’re more empathic. They observe more carefully. You’re smart, popular at the firm and—if we can mix our gender metaphor for a minute—the grapevine here says you’ve got balls.”

“Does it now?” Taylor asked, frowning and feeling immensely pleased.

“And if you want another reason: I trust you.”

Trust me? she wondered. He doesn’t even know me. He—But then she understood. She smiled. “And you know I didn’t steal it. I’ve got an alibi.”

Reece nodded unabashedly. “Yep, you were out of town.”

She’d gone to Maryland to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with her parents.

Taylor said, “I could’ve hired somebody.”

“I think whoever was behind the theft
did
hire somebody.” A nod toward the cabinet. “It’s a professional break-in—the burglar picked the lock and, whatever you see in the movies, that ain’t easy. But the point is that you don’t have a motive, and motive is the number one reason somebody becomes a suspect in a crime. Why would
you
steal it? You have a good relationship with everybody at the firm. You don’t need money. You’ve applied to law school—three of the best in the country. Besides, I just can’t imagine Samuel Lockwood’s daughter stealing a note.”

She felt a troubled jolt that he’d peered so far into her life. “Well, I suspect Ted Bundy had upright parents too. It’s just that this is out of my depth, Mitchell. You need a pro—one of those private eyes you’ve hired before.”

“That wouldn’t work,” he said bluntly, as if it were obvious. “I need somebody with a reason to be here, who won’t raise eyebrows. You’ll have to poke into a lot of different places at the firm.”

Like Alice on the other side of the looking glass.

Still seeing the hesitancy in her face, he added, “It could work out well for you too.” He toyed with his coffee cup. She lifted an enquiring eyebrow and he continued, “I’m a trial lawyer and I lost my delicacy the first time I ever stood up in court. The fact is if that note doesn’t turn up and I lose the case then I’m not going to make partner this year and that just isn’t acceptable. I might even get fired. But if we
can
find it and nobody learns about the theft then it’s pretty likely I’ll make partner here or, if I don’t want to stay at Hubbard, White, at some other firm.”

“And?” she asked, still not certain where his comments were headed.

“I’ll be in a position to make sure you get into whatever law school you want and get you a job when you graduate. I’ve got contacts everywhere—corporate firms, the government, public welfare law, environmental law firms.”

As a paralegal Taylor Lockwood had learned that the engine of law ran on many fuels and that it would seize and burn without the delicate web of contacts and networks and unspoken obligations that Reece was not so subtly referring to.

But she also knew that you could always take a higher path and, with luck, sweat and smarts make your own way in this world. She said stiffly, “I appreciate that, Mitchell, but my undergrad professors’re writing me all the letters of recommendation I need.”

He blinked and held up a hand. “Look, I’m sorry. That was out of line. I’m used to dealing with clients who’re either crooks or greedy bastards.” A sour laugh. “And I’m not sure which are my pro bono criminal clients and which are the white-shoe folks we wine and dine at the Downtown Athletic Club.”

She nodded, accepting his apology but glad certain ground rules were clear.

Reece looked her over for a moment, as if he suddenly saw her differently. A faint smile bloomed on his face. “I’m kind of like you.”

“How do you mean?” she asked.

“I get the sense that you
never
ask for help.”

She shrugged.

“I don’t either. Never. But now I
need
help and it’s hard for me to ask. I don’t even know how to.… So, let me try again.” A boyish laugh. “Will you help me?” he asked in a voice filled with what seemed to be uncharacteristic emotion.

Taylor looked out the window. The pale sun went behind thick clouds and the sky became as dark as its reflection in the choppy harbor. “I love views,” she said. “In my apartment, you can see the Empire State Building. Provided you lean out the bathroom window.”

Silence. Reece brushed his hair aside then rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. The brass clock on his desk ticked softly.

Taylor mentally asked the opinion of Alice, the young
girl in the English countryside who decided out of summer boredom to follow a talking white rabbit down its hole to a world very different from her own. Finally Taylor said to the lawyer, “All right. I frankly don’t have a clue what to do but I’ll help you.”

Reece smiled and leaned forward suddenly then stopped fast. There’s a code of chastity within law firms. Whatever liaisons occurred in hotel rooms or attorneys’ beds at home, when you were within the labyrinth of the office, cheeks were not kissed and lip never met lip. Even embracing was suspect. Reece’s concession to gratitude was taking Taylor’s hand in both of his. She smelled a mix of expensive aftershave and sweat in his wake as he sat back.